Abstract
Focusing on one example of African diasporic writing in Europe, this essay explores the social construction of black identity in relation to Chika Unigwe’s authorial self-representation as an ethnic minority writer in Flanders and to Unigwe’s second novel, On Black Sisters’ Street (2009). Central to this inquiry is the question of how Unigwe and the African sex workers in On Black Sisters’ Street become black in Belgium and how they negotiate a sense of self vis-à-vis the already pronounced social order. More specifically, the essay argues that their self-representations reveal the mediation of dominant historical images and western symbolic meanings, but also indicate an attempt to wrest control of the construction of their bodies away from the distorted visions of hegemonic culture.
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Notes
- 1.
Unigwe’s article is also digitally available as ‘How to be an African’, albeit in revised form (see Unigwe, ‘How to be an African’, African Writing Online, http://www.african-writing.com/nine/chikaunigwe.htm (accessed 29 March 2013).
- 2.
Unigwe, ‘Zwart worden in zeven lessen’, MO: Mondiaal Nieuws, 11 February 2010, http://www.mo.be/opinie/zwart-worden-zeven-lessen (accessed 29 March 2013). This and all further translations are my own.
- 3.
Unigwe, ‘How to be an African’.
- 4.
Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 169.
- 5.
Hall, ‘Minimal Selves’, in Lisa Appignanesi, ed., Identify: The Real Me (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1987), p. 45.
- 6.
Amadou, ‘Wij spreken pas als jullie luisteren’, De Standaard, 13 October 2004, http://www.standaard.be/cnt/g339ete9 (accessed 21 September 2015).
- 7.
This description appears on the back cover of On Black Sisters’ Street. Before making her appearance on the Flemish-Belgian literary scene in 2005, Chika Unigwe had already successfully debuted with English-language publications in Nigeria and Britain. Her poetry was published in Nigeria in the early 1990s, her short stories won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition and a Commonwealth Short Story Award and were published in Wasafiri and a number of anthologies of contemporary African writing and she wrote the two children’s books, A Rainbow for Dinner (2003) and Ije at School (2003). After her debut in Belgium, Unigwe has continued to publish short stories, essays and translations and editions of her writings in both Dutch and English.
- 8.
Cloostermans, ‘As en confetti: Grote emoties bij Chika Unigwe’, De Standaard, 22 September 2005, http://www.standaard.be/cnt/gpai4d5b (accessed 21 September 2015).
- 9.
Lamrabet has elaborated her views in interview: see, for example, Erwin Jans, ‘Schrijven al seen vorm van archief’, De Wereldmorgen, 12 December 2014, http://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artikel/2014/12/12/schrijven-als-een-vorm-van-archief (accessed 21 September 2015). For Bouazza’s views, see Bouazza, Een beer in bontjas (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2004), p. 19.
- 10.
On strategic exoticism in New African Writing such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas obligé (Allah Is Not Obliged, 2000), see Akin Adesokan, ‘New African Writing and the Question of Audience’, Research in African Literatures, Vol. 43, No. 3 (2012), pp. 1–20.
- 11.
Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 13.
- 12.
Ibid., p. xi.
- 13.
Brouillette, Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace (London: Palgrave, 2007), p. 19.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 7.
- 15.
Walkowitz, ‘The Location of Literature: The Transnational Book and the Migrant Writer’, Contemporary Literature, Vol. 47, No. 4 (2006), p. 533.
- 16.
See, for example, Alfred Hornung and Ernstpeter Ruhe, eds, Postcolonialisme and Autobiographie (1998), Gillian Whitlock, Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit (2007), C.L. Innes, The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English (2007), David Huddart, Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography (2008) and Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Life-Writing (2009).
- 17.
Innes, The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 58. See also Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Life-Writing: Culture, Politics, and Self-Representation (London: Routledge, 2009), p. xxiv.
- 18.
See Innes, Cambridge Introduction, p. 58.
- 19.
Unigwe, On Black Sisters’ Street (London: Jonathan Cape, 2009), p. 84. Further page references will be given in the text.
- 20.
See Gillian Whitlock, ‘The Skin of the Burqa: Recent Life Narratives from Afghanistan’, Biography, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2005), pp. 54–76.
- 21.
Pendelton, ‘Love for Sale: Queering Heterosexuality’, in Jill Nagle, ed., Whores and Other Feminists (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 183.
- 22.
Adichie, ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ (2009), TED, http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_ danger_of_a_single_story.html (accessed 17 September 2015).
- 23.
Quoted in Linda Anderson, Autobiography (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 108.
- 24.
Zagarell, ‘Narrative of Community: The Identification of a Genre’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1988), p. 499. See also Roxanne Harde, ed., Narratives of Community: Women’s Short Story Sequences (2007).
- 25.
Zagarell, ‘Narrative of Community’, p. 527.
- 26.
Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Life-Writing, p. xx.
- 27.
Innes, Cambridge Introduction, p. 64.
- 28.
This essay is a shortened version of an earlier publication: Sarah de Mul, ‘Becoming Black in Belgium: The Social Construction of Blackness in Chika Unigwe’s Authorial Self-Representation and On Black Sisters’ Street’, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Vol. 49, No. 1 (2014), pp. 11–27.
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de Mul, S. (2016). Becoming Black in Belgium: Chika Unigwe and the Social Construction of Blackness. In: Hammond, A. (eds) The Novel and Europe. Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52627-4_15
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